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This past weekend, tens of thousands of tabletop gaming fanatics made a pilgrimage to the German city of Essen for the annual Internationale Spieltage fair—better known to board gaming fans simply as Spiel (or Essen). It’s the most important event in the board gaming calendar, where major publishers unveil their new releases, indie designers clamor to draw attention to their passion projects, and players scramble to try the hottest new games before they hit store shelves.

It’s a heaving, sprawling, noisy celebration of analogue gaming, and with thousands of new products on show, it’s impossible to do more than scratch the surface of what’s on offer. Once you set foot in the cavernous Messe Essen venue, you quickly realize that no matter how meticulously you’ve planned your visit, it all counts for nothing; it’s all about spotting empty spaces at demo tables and leaping at them before anyone else.

Still, I managed to play a bevy of exciting new games, and along the way we discovered a few surprise favorites. Here are our highlights of Spiel 2018.

Skylands

This fantasy-themed tile-laying game has players building chains of floating islands in the sky. You’ll score points by constructing different configurations of islands, populating cities, and avoiding empty space on your player board at game’s end. Standard stuff—but what makes it interesting is how you go about it.

You’ll choose a single action to take on each turn, like adding a new land tile to your board or filling some of your islands with new inhabitants. But whatever action you choose, your opponents will immediately get to take a slightly less powerful version of the same action. It’s therefore almost impossible for one player to establish an unassailable lead, and you’ll need to pay close attention to your rivals’ boards to spot moves that benefit you—while not opening up opportunities for others.

The result is that Skylands comes with just a touch more player interaction than similar games, where your only way to interfere with an opponent’s plans is by snatching resources they might want. This interaction adds an extra layer to your decision making. Combined with a multitude of ways to score points, it allows for some impressive tactical depth in a family-weight game.

Keyforge: Call of the Archons

Ars Technica’s Aaron Zimmerman touched on Keyforge, the new card game from Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield, in his report from Gen Con earlier this year. But I got my hands on a set of advance review decks around a month ago, and Keyforge has quickly become one of my favorite games of 2018.

Further Reading

Most coverage of the game has focused on its unusual distribution model. Rather than buying randomized packs of cards and building custom decks, players purchase complete decks generated by an algorithm. But looking past its publishing quirks, Keyforge also comes with some seriously solid gameplay.

Each deck contains cards from three factions, and players can only activate a single faction on each turn. This neatly sidesteps Magic’s issue of “mana screw,” where players can be left without the resources they need to play the cards in their hand, but it still imposes interesting restrictions on what they’re able to do at any given time. It makes for a succession of big, swingy, dramatic events, but never at the expense of thoughtful strategy.

The big question is whether Keyforge is likely to find an audience. Are there enough players who are interested in geeky card games but don’t want to get into the complexities of crafting their own decks? I hope so.

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42 Reader Comments

I made it to a couple of days, but didn't get much time to actually play anything. I picked up a copy of 'When in Rome', an Alexa-enabled Trivial Pursuit-style game focusing on knowledge about 20 cities around the world. We had previously bought the same company's 'Beasts of Burden' as a gift - and accidentally received a total of 3 copies; they had a shipping snafu - and for EUR20 it seemed like a fun party game.

But as a Kickstarter frequenter, it was almost as interesting to see games that I'd backed taking physical form at the convention.

Jeeze, some joyless people in the comments today. Added about half the recommendations here, but who knows when I'll have the time to buy them. Anyone who follows the hobby closely (or, even better, was at Essen) have recommendations for someone who likes quick, breezy games? Things that are relatively simple, can be played with two players and is over before I go stir crazy? Think games like Splendor, Century, Azul, Lost Cities: The Card Game, Through the Desert, etcetera.

Jeeze, some joyless people in the comments today. Added about half the recommendations here, but who knows when I'll have the time to buy them. Anyone who follows the hobby closely (or, even better, was at Essen) have recommendations for someone who likes quick, breezy games? Things that are relatively simple, can be played with two players and is over before I go stir crazy? Think games like Splendor, Century, Azul, Lost Cities: The Card Game, Through the Desert, etcetera.

I'd be quite curious and thankful to hear about them!

Got kahuna recently which is good. Seven wonders dual and Agricole all creatures big and small but you might have those already

Jeeze, some joyless people in the comments today. Added about half the recommendations here, but who knows when I'll have the time to buy them. Anyone who follows the hobby closely (or, even better, was at Essen) have recommendations for someone who likes quick, breezy games? Things that are relatively simple, can be played with two players and is over before I go stir crazy? Think games like Splendor, Century, Azul, Lost Cities: The Card Game, Through the Desert, etcetera.

I'd be quite curious and thankful to hear about them!

My family likes grifters for a quick two player game. Also there's a new version of star realms, but I haven't tried it yet. There's a hundred ways to play that game, but I know people get burned out pretty quickly too. Also we play patchwork, but I don't think it's as quick.

The hidden gem for me was peanut club, that really turned out to be a great little auction party game with many hilarious moments.The biggest disappointment for me was treasure Island. It was a very fragile experience that just didn't click with anyone at the table.

Other than that I really enjoyed teotihuacan and the estates.

Will return once I get through more of the 30-40 games I got when there.

I am most looking forward to Teotihuacan (I have already pre-ordered it)I am also looking forward to Gugong -- interesting mechanic (play a card, take a card though there is more to it than that) -- doesn't look to be AMAZING but it plays 5 and Will likely get the Great Western Trail expansion.For lighter games Reef is good and there is a stained glass version of Azul.I liked my play of Coimbra but am hoping someone in my group gets it. I have 3 kickstarter games that should be coming soon (Gentes, Crusaders, and Key Flow)

There was this game made in the 1970's called 'World War III'. I think it was made by a company called 'Simulations Publications' which went out of business in the 1980's from what I can tell.

Anyway, this is a game that takes months to play, and deals with a future (from the 1970's onward) WW III complete with conventional, cold war, and nuclear weapons use capability. It has around 2000 small pieces in the form of small cardboard 1/2 inch squares which represent military units, ships/subs, aircraft, nuclear weapons, bases, industrial complexes, major population centers, etc... of all the countries of the world, all sorts of things with the type of thing it is and its 'strength' and vulnerability rating on the face of each piece. Its a turn based game. The board is this large four foot x four foot, when unfolded, heavy paper with a map of the world and a grid of small hexagons covering the 'world'. The instruction/rule manual is about 75 pages long. From what I can tell so far its instructions and design is based upon 'realistic' world conflict as it would have happened in the late 1970's to 1980's to possibly 2000 time frame for some scenarios. It's instructions manual credits page lists military and government sources/information who/which contributed to the design of the game, U.S., Russian, U.k., India, and other countries. The game even has an option of a 'terrorist' war type of thing that included Iraq and Afghanistan in a conflict with the US and the UK. Its eerie how accurate (for a game anyway) it is even for today's world. Supply, manufacturing, geo-politics, population, logistics.... etc... everything figures into the game and is represented, so its not just an attack-defend type of thing and you really have to think about your 'country' and its people and government decisions. A Player can be any country depending on how they were selected at the game beginning, and wage war or peace or neutrality from the aspect of that country. They really put some thought into designing this game, and you really have to plan in the game so waiting for a player to make their move may take hours and sometimes days, there is just so much to consider when you make a move. Combat/war operation engagements and other effects in the geo-political/war/theater situations are resolved with die roll.

A friend has it, got it from an estate sale and it was fully intact although it had been opened but it appeared to have never been played because the map and playing pieces had never been removed from the internal plastic wrapping. So he called me up last month and told me about this thing and we set it up and have been playing it since a few days a week with four others (although the game instructions says its designed for 8 player but we are trying it with six). Its going to take a while to resolve the war.

ya don't see board games like that anywhere any more.

There is a mention in the game manual that the game was designed for military 'war college' use. From what I've been able to find out the game; We are playing a limited release with only 200 made and distributed to the war colleges. But there were two versions with one being the version we have (war college version), and the other being a public sale version scaled down which is this one: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3584/world-war-3 which had a designer boxed edition and a flat tray edition. The packaging on the public sale version has the title as "World War 3" as shown in the link with the missiles pic, and the limited release war college version has the title as "World War III" (roman numerals) with the pics being missiles and aircraft and ships. The war college version map is a little different on the map borders and is a little larger than the public sale version. The public sale version is designed for two or more players with a 16 page rule book and 600 counters representing the military units, and the war college version is fixed at 8 players with a 75 page rule/instruction manual and around 2000 counters representing the military units and other things. The public sale version is designed for around six hours of play, the limited release war college version has up to a basic 48 hour period of play but can take longer depending on the scope decided at the beginning and scenarios like all out multiple front global war can possibly take months. The war college version has an additional manual with pre designed scenarios (including the 'terrorist' type related scenarios) and the public sale version doesn't. The limited release war college version has strict constraints on nuclear weapon use and the type of nuke (field level tactical vs strategic types) and the public sale version doesn't, there is also a 'chemical/biological' warfare capability and scenario in the war college version that is not in the public sale version. The war college version is more open and variable as to who starts the conflict and why (although the then Soviet Union does figure into a lot of the scenarios as the antagonist), the public sale version is designed with the then Soviet Union starting the conflict by overrunning Germany and France after a period of increased tension between the US and the Soviet Union and increased world tensions. The game for both versions covers five years in seasonal (quarterly) turns, the war college version allows a non-turn player to interject with military movements under certain circumstances which can escalate or de-escalate things which can change the turn scale time period some and includes a Geo-political aspect not present in the public for sale version. The war college version can have players taking/making simultaneous military movements and engagements turns (but no more than four players at the same time), the public sale version does not have that with all turns sequential. There are other differences as well between the two versions.

There was this game made in the 1970's called 'World War III'. I think it was made by a company called 'Simulations Publications' which went out of business in the 1980's from what I can tell.

Anyway, this is a game that takes months to play, and deals with a future (from the 1970's onward) WW III complete with conventional, cold war, and nuclear weapons use capability. It has around 2000 small pieces in the form of small cardboard squares which represent military units, ships/subs, aircraft, nuclear weapons, bases, industrial complexes, of all the countries of the world, all sorts of things with the type of thing it was and its 'strength' on the face of each piece. Its a turn based game. The board is this large four foot x four foot, when unfolded, heavy paper with a map of the world and a grid of small hexagons covering the 'world'. The instruction/rule manual is about 75 pages long. From what I can tell so far its instructions and design is based upon realistic world conflict as it would have happened in the 1980's to possibly 2000 time frame. It's instructions manual credits page lists military and government sources who contributed to the design of the game, U.S., Russian, U.k., India, and other countries. The game even has an option of a 'terrorist' war type of thing that included Iraq and Afghanistan in a conflict with the US and the UK. Its eerie how accurate (for a game anyway) it is even for today's world. Supply, manufacturing, politics, population, logistics.... etc... everything figures into the game, so its not just an attack-defend type of thing and you really have to think about your 'country' and its people and government decisions. A Player can be any country depending on how they were selected at the game beginning, and wage war or peace or neutrality from the aspect of that country. They really put some thought into designing this game, and you really have to plan in the game so waiting for a player to make their move may take hours and sometimes days, there is just so much to consider when you make a move. Combat/war operation engagements and other effects in the geo-political/war/theater situations are resolved with die roll.

A friend has it, got it from an estate sale and it was fully intact although it had been opened but it appeared to have never been played because the map and playing pieces had never been removed from the internal plastic wrapping. So he called me up last month and told me about this thing and we set it up and have been playing it since a few days a week with four others. Its going to take a while to resolve the war.

ya don't see board games like that anywhere any more.

The board war game market went tango uniform in the 1980s when computers became capable of running war games. Gary Grigsby computer games are still being played 30 years after they came out.

There was this game made in the 1970's called 'World War III'. I think it was made by a company called 'Simulations Publications' which went out of business in the 1980's from what I can tell.

Anyway, this is a game that takes months to play, and deals with a future (from the 1970's onward) WW III complete with conventional, cold war, and nuclear weapons use capability. It has around 2000 small pieces in the form of small cardboard squares which represent military units, ships/subs, aircraft, nuclear weapons, bases, industrial complexes, of all the countries of the world, all sorts of things with the type of thing it was and its 'strength' on the face of each piece. Its a turn based game. The board is this large four foot x four foot, when unfolded, heavy paper with a map of the world and a grid of small hexagons covering the 'world'. The instruction/rule manual is about 75 pages long. From what I can tell so far its instructions and design is based upon realistic world conflict as it would have happened in the 1980's to possibly 2000 time frame. It's instructions manual credits page lists military and government sources who contributed to the design of the game, U.S., Russian, U.k., India, and other countries. The game even has an option of a 'terrorist' war type of thing that included Iraq and Afghanistan in a conflict with the US and the UK. Its eerie how accurate (for a game anyway) it is even for today's world. Supply, manufacturing, politics, population, logistics.... etc... everything figures into the game, so its not just an attack-defend type of thing and you really have to think about your 'country' and its people and government decisions. A Player can be any country depending on how they were selected at the game beginning, and wage war or peace or neutrality from the aspect of that country. They really put some thought into designing this game, and you really have to plan in the game so waiting for a player to make their move may take hours and sometimes days, there is just so much to consider when you make a move. Combat/war operation engagements and other effects in the geo-political/war/theater situations are resolved with die roll.

A friend has it, got it from an estate sale and it was fully intact although it had been opened but it appeared to have never been played because the map and playing pieces had never been removed from the internal plastic wrapping. So he called me up last month and told me about this thing and we set it up and have been playing it since a few days a week with four others. Its going to take a while to resolve the war.

ya don't see board games like that anywhere any more.

The board war game market went tango uniform in the 1980s when computers became capable of running war games. Gary Grigsby computer games are still being played 30 years after they came out.

yeah, but there is something about a board game of such immersive and thought provoking quality with your friends in person all gathered around the table that can't be beat by computer based games.

There was this game made in the 1970's called 'World War III'. I think it was made by a company called 'Simulations Publications' which went out of business in the 1980's from what I can tell..

Simulation Publications Inc - SPI, was one of the big companies of board wargaming in the 70s, it got taken over by TSR in the early 80s as they borrowed some money to stabilise their financial situation, but TSR called in the note just two weeks after it was issued (one of the reasons I despised TSR) and aquired the assets. TSR went out of their way to further alienate SPI customers.

I didn't play World War III, but I did play "The Next War". World War III was higher level and much concerned with naval and logisitics. these were abstracted in "The Next War", but it was a huge game that took weeks to play, or until you ran out of patience and started chucking nukes

I think that some Eurogame makers hate the fact that they need to theme their games. Most Eurogames are really built around abstract mechanic with absolutely no effort to "simulate" anything of the physical world. After the game is made, someone slaps a theme over it. I swear, I think some Eurogame makers are going for literally the most boring and pointless theme they can think of to skin their game in some sort of protest. I think that there is a secret competition between the Eurogame makers to see who can get the most boring theme published and still land a smashing success because the mechanics are solid.

Jeeze, some joyless people in the comments today. Added about half the recommendations here, but who knows when I'll have the time to buy them. Anyone who follows the hobby closely (or, even better, was at Essen) have recommendations for someone who likes quick, breezy games? Things that are relatively simple, can be played with two players and is over before I go stir crazy? Think games like Splendor, Century, Azul, Lost Cities: The Card Game, Through the Desert, etcetera.

I'd be quite curious and thankful to hear about them!

I second Gizmos and will add Space Base. Both are simple rules and make you want to play again because you are convinced you can "do it better next time". I would also consider New York Slice and Paper Tales. I wouldn't buy them but I'm happy to play them.

Jeeze, some joyless people in the comments today. Added about half the recommendations here, but who knows when I'll have the time to buy them. Anyone who follows the hobby closely (or, even better, was at Essen) have recommendations for someone who likes quick, breezy games? Things that are relatively simple, can be played with two players and is over before I go stir crazy? Think games like Splendor, Century, Azul, Lost Cities: The Card Game, Through the Desert, etcetera.

I'd be quite curious and thankful to hear about them!

Got kahuna recently which is good. Seven wonders dual and Agricole all creatures big and small but you might have those already

I was wondering about Kahuna. I can vouch for Seven Wonders Duel and Agricola as well, both great games. Although Agricola requires a little more time to learn all the bits.

If you enjoy word games Codenames is great as quick'n'easy a two-player game as well.

Jeeze, some joyless people in the comments today. Added about half the recommendations here, but who knows when I'll have the time to buy them. Anyone who follows the hobby closely (or, even better, was at Essen) have recommendations for someone who likes quick, breezy games? Things that are relatively simple, can be played with two players and is over before I go stir crazy? Think games like Splendor, Century, Azul, Lost Cities: The Card Game, Through the Desert, etcetera.

I'd be quite curious and thankful to hear about them!

I know right... let people enjoy things....

As for your request, If you haven't seen it, check out Akrotiri for 2 player. Small game, but enjoyable, short but complex enough to have fairly deep strategy. there are also light games like "Tiny Epic" brand games. Check out Tiny Epic Quest and Tiny Epic Galaxies.

For card games, two interesting games are Gloom and Mystic Vale. Both use transparent cards to cover/modify other cards. Gloom is a story telling game where you try to kill your characters before the other player can kill their own. Mystic Vale is a drafting/deck building game where you "build cards" by adding stats to them. Those cards then become your deck.

There are also a few "tile laying" games that allow you to build the board and have different levels of conflict. Takenoko, Suberbia, Castles of Mad King Ludwig are all really fun.

All of these I have mentioned are fairly light, within an hour game play and should be good at 2 player.

I find these game cons simultaneously awesome and depressing. On one hand, there is an abundance of awesome games coming out all the time. On the other, I don't even have enough time to play the great ones I already own. Always fun to follow, though!

Hmmm... would you say Scorpius Freighter fits the "cardboard Elite" mold? Because we tried to had that experience with Xia: Legends of a Drift System, but it didnt quite work for us, and I'd love to have something in that vein to take back to the playing group and test.

The other game I'm interested from Essen (which, as all years, I did not attend because I dont plan and I'm broke ) is Underwater Cities, which seems to be a "Terraforming Mars"-like game but different and implementing some stuff I really would like TM to have (like era decks, man, era decks... why are you giving me so many cards that I cant use at all till 10 gen later...)

Thematically, there are some similarities to games like Elite. But mechanically it's totally different. The planets on the board are basically rondels that you move ships around to take different types of actions. You're trying to out-optimise your opponents rather than get into battles with them. From the limited time I spent with it, it seems like a fairly deep game, certainly a tough one to describe in a roundup post like this. Would love to give it the full review treatment once I've had a few plays!

The front page photo of the shop (booth?) stuffed with board games intrigues and terrifies me.

Firstly, there are a LOT of board games.

On the other hand, they seem to be sorted in the traditional fashion of "not at all."

As in most shops, they're sorted alphabetically by category. "Board game" starts with B, so assuming the shop doesn't have an Antipodean section for all their merchandise from the land of sheep and convicts, it'll be first.

I think that some Eurogame makers hate the fact that they need to theme their games. Most Eurogames are really built around abstract mechanic with absolutely no effort to "simulate" anything of the physical world. After the game is made, someone slaps a theme over it. I swear, I think some Eurogame makers are going for literally the most boring and pointless theme they can think of to skin their game in some sort of protest. I think that there is a secret competition between the Eurogame makers to see who can get the most boring theme published and still land a smashing success because the mechanics are solid.

Which would mean that the mechanics are really awesome! Lol, but you are right, sometimes the themes are bizarre, to say the least. Nonetheless, some of these "reskins" or "re-theming" like the Neuroshima hex one do show that the theme is not the key point in these games... (like that re-skin of Dominion with star-wars someone posted online)

Jeeze, some joyless people in the comments today. Added about half the recommendations here, but who knows when I'll have the time to buy them. Anyone who follows the hobby closely (or, even better, was at Essen) have recommendations for someone who likes quick, breezy games? Things that are relatively simple, can be played with two players and is over before I go stir crazy? Think games like Splendor, Century, Azul, Lost Cities: The Card Game, Through the Desert, etcetera.

I'd be quite curious and thankful to hear about them!

High Society. The the best short breezy game I've played in ages. Possibly the best ever. Also recommend: Grifters, 5 Minute Dungeon, For Sale, New York 1901, Lost Cities.